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The Big Story: Nuclear woes

India on Wednesday embarked on the biggest expansion of its nuclear power footprint yet. The Union Cabinet cleared 10 new nuclear power plants, each with a capacity of 700 MW (mega watts of electricity). This will more than double India’s current nuclear power capacity of 6,780 MW.

The impulse for the expansion is obvious. In January, the draft national electricity plan of the Central Electricity Authority estimated that India’s peak power demand will increase to 690 GW (giga watts of electricity) by 2035 from the current 153 GW.

Nuclear power is widely regarded as a cleaner source of energy than fossil fuels like coal. Unlike renewable energy sources such as solar power which needs large tracts of land, nuclear plants work on a smaller area to produce larger amounts of power. They have been marketed as the cheapest alternative to coal-based generation plants.

However, the story of nuclear plants in India has been fraught with delays, opacity and large-scale local dissatisfaction. Nothing exemplifies this better than the Kudankulam facility in Tamil Nadu. The project was announced in 2002 and was supposed to produce electricity by 2007. Instead, the reactor began functioning only in 2012, five years behind its original schedule.

Not just this, the Kudankulam plant perhaps remains the most inefficient of India’s nuclear plants. As per official data, in 2014, the plant functioned for only half the potential hours it could have clocked up. Between April 2015 and January 2016, the plant worked at only 20% of its capacity. The performance of some other facilities has been equally poor.

In addition, India’s nuclear plants do not function transparently. Most technical information relating to the plants are beyond public scrutiny owing to security concerns. In 2016, for example, a leak was reported in the Kakrapar plant in Gujarat, but the extent of the leak still remains a mystery.

Finally, as witnessed in Kudankulam in 2011 , communities in many parts of India have rejected proposals to have nuclear plants constructed in their backyard. These protesters have been dealt with force and state action, with some even made to face sedition cases.

Without addressing the concerns about the safety and efficiency of India’s existing nuclear plants, the government’s large-scale nuclear expansion will only invite further distrust.

The Big Scroll

Nityanand Jayaraman writes on why India wants to import US reactors that even people in the US are not keen to use.

Kumar Sundaram on the mystery surrounding the Kakrapar nuclear plant leaks in 2016.

Punditry

Nilanjan Ghosh in the Businessline says the lack of scientific data has hindered the Teesta water sharing accord between India and Bangladesh.

In the Indian Express, Khalid Anis Ansari explainswhy blanket reservations for Muslims in Telengana without considering the class differences within the community could be disastrous.

In The Hindu, Meera Srinivasan traces the history and political isolation of plantation Tamils in Sri Lanka – Indian migrants who crossed the water to work on tea plantations during British rule.

Giggles

Don’t miss

Arunabh Saikia reports on how a rumour about spread of impotency through a vaccine caused panic in Assam.

“‘It turns out that the “news” Nooressa Begum watched was a video clip circulated via WhatsApp. ‘I received this video about an RSS injection on a WhatsApp group,’ said Samsul Haq, a resident of Hatigaon who works as a driver with an online cab service, referring to the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh.

Haq claimed that everyone he knew had received the same video. ‘My neighbour’s two girls have stopped going to school because the parents are scared,’ he added.”

Adopting three simple habits can help maximise the benefits of existing sanitation infrastructure.

India’s sanitation problem is well documented – the country was recently declared as having the highest number of people living without basic sanitation facilities. Sanitation encompasses all conditions relating to public health - especially sewage disposal and access to clean drinking water. Due to associated losses in productivity caused by sickness, increased healthcare costs and increased mortality, India recorded a loss of 5.2% of its GDP to poor sanitation in 2015. As tremendous as the economic losses are, the on-ground, human consequences of poor sanitation are grim - about one in 10 deaths, according to the World Bank.

Poor sanitation contributes to about 10% of the world’s disease burden and is linked to even those diseases that may not present any correlation at first. For example, while lack of nutrition is a direct cause of anaemia, poor sanitation can contribute to the problem by causing intestinal diseases which prevent people from absorbing nutrition from their food. In fact, a study found a correlation between improved sanitation and reduced prevalence of anaemia in 14 Indian states. Diarrhoeal diseases, the most well-known consequence of poor sanitation, are the third largest cause of child mortality in India. They are also linked to undernutrition and stunting in children - 38% of Indian children exhibit stunted growth. Improved sanitation can also help reduce prevalence of neglected tropical diseases (NTDs). Though not a cause of high mortality rate, NTDs impair physical and cognitive development, contribute to mother and child illness and death and affect overall productivity. NTDs caused by parasitic worms - such as hookworms, whipworms etc. - infect millions every year and spread through open defecation. Improving toilet access and access to clean drinking water can significantly boost disease control programmes for diarrhoea, NTDs and other correlated conditions.

Unfortunately, with about 732 million people who have no access to toilets, India currently accounts for more than half of the world population that defecates in the open. India also accounts for the largest rural population living without access to clean water. Only 16% of India’s rural population is currently served by piped water.

However, there is cause for optimism. In the three years of Swachh Bharat Abhiyan, the country’s sanitation coverage has risen from 39% to 65% and eight states and Union Territories have been declared open defecation free. But lasting change cannot be ensured by the proliferation of sanitation infrastructure alone. Ensuring the usage of toilets is as important as building them, more so due to the cultural preference for open defecation in rural India.

According to the World Bank, hygiene promotion is essential to realise the potential of infrastructure investments in sanitation. Behavioural intervention is most successful when it targets few behaviours with the most potential for impact. An area of public health where behavioural training has made an impact is WASH - water, sanitation and hygiene - a key issue of UN Sustainable Development Goal 6. Compliance to WASH practices has the potential to reduce illness and death, poverty and improve overall socio-economic development. The UN has even marked observance days for each - World Water Day for water (22 March), World Toilet Day for sanitation (19 November) and Global Handwashing Day for hygiene (15 October).

At its simplest, the benefits of WASH can be availed through three simple habits that safeguard against disease - washing hands before eating, drinking clean water and using a clean toilet. Handwashing and use of toilets are some of the most important behavioural interventions that keep diarrhoeal diseases from spreading, while clean drinking water is essential to prevent water-borne diseases and adverse health effects of toxic contaminants. In India, Hindustan Unilever Limited launched the Swachh Aadat Swachh Bharat initiative, a WASH behaviour change programme, to complement the Swachh Bharat Abhiyan. Through its on-ground behaviour change model, SASB seeks to promote the three basic WASH habits to create long-lasting personal hygiene compliance among the populations it serves.

This touching film made as a part of SASB’s awareness campaign shows how lack of knowledge of basic hygiene practices means children miss out on developmental milestones due to preventable diseases.

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SASB created the Swachhata curriculum, a textbook to encourage adoption of personal hygiene among school going children. It makes use of conceptual learning to teach primary school students about cleanliness, germs and clean habits in an engaging manner. Swachh Basti is an extensive urban outreach programme for sensitising urban slum residents about WASH habits through demos, skits and etc. in partnership with key local stakeholders such as doctors, anganwadi workers and support groups. In Ghatkopar, Mumbai, HUL built the first-of-its-kind Suvidha Centre - an urban water, hygiene and sanitation community centre. It provides toilets, handwashing and shower facilities, safe drinking water and state-of-the-art laundry operations at an affordable cost to about 1,500 residents of the area.

HUL’s factory workers also act as Swachhata Doots, or messengers of change who teach the three habits of WASH in their own villages. This mobile-led rural behaviour change communication model also provides a volunteering opportunity to those who are busy but wish to make a difference. A toolkit especially designed for this purpose helps volunteers approach, explain and teach people in their immediate vicinity - their drivers, cooks, domestic helps etc. - about the three simple habits for better hygiene. This helps cast the net of awareness wider as regular interaction is conducive to habit formation. To learn more about their volunteering programme, click here. To learn more about the Swachh Aadat Swachh Bharat initiative, click here.

This article was produced by the Scroll marketing team on behalf of Hindustan Unilever and not by the Scroll editorial team.